Tag: Creatures Among Us

A dapper male, armored in pinecone-colored scales, scurried by, then froze briefly amid limbs, twigs and yellow puffs of huisache blossoms at Santa Ana Wildlife Refuge in early March. A female popped up on crossed branches. The couple mated briefly, then dashed away into the spring foliage. This Texas spiny lizard—also called tree or fence…

Contrary to our early schooling from Looney Tunes, a roadrunner, no matter how clever, cannot outrun and escape the jaws of a hungry coyote. While this speedy bird can zip along at bursts of 20 mph—third only to the ostrich, at 43 and the emu, at 30—a coyote can clock 40 mph. Had Wile E.…

A man on the beach gesticulated so wildly that I imagine the driver for Cameron County Beach Patrol, veering towards him, feared that someone was drowning, stung or, heaven forbid, bitten. But, no, the man sought to protect a beautifully adorned blue land crab crawling along the sand, coaxing it—using a plastic bucket as prod…

by M. Kathy Raines “Diving ducks!” we cried as sleek, streamlined black cormorants seamlessly slipped beneath resaca waters behind our Brownsville apartment complex. Moving from Indiana in the ‘80s to teach school, we had never seen the like. An efficient hunter, our native Neotropic cormorant—with its round, emerald eyes and long, uplifted, hooked bill—has the…

by M. Kathy Raines Hundreds of massive black shadows patterned the frond-strewn pathways at Sabal Palm Wildlife Sanctuary one winter’s midday. A loud crinkly crunch heralded their heavy plopping into dried sections of palms. Distinctive dark shapes, as graceful as ice dancers, wheeled above. Each year, turkey vultures who opt to migrate from northern parts…

by M. Kathy Raines Iced confections spring to mind when I view clumps of wintering white pelicans resting and preening on a sandbank in the Laguna Madre—long carrot-colored bills slicing here and there. Though similar looking—with their pouches, hefty size and graceful, synchronized flight —white and brown pelicans, North America’s sole species, behave quite differently.…